BTerrell Group Blog

To prevent users from accidentally or deliberately changing, moving, or deleting important information from a Microsoft Excel worksheet, yet still giving users the ability to change only certain cells, you might want to try the following tips:

To quickly protect and unprotect worksheets:
- Right click on the Sheet tab and select Protect Sheet
- Select the desired options under All users of this worksheet to
- Once you have protected the worksheet, the Protect Sheet icon changes to Unprotect Sheet
- Select this icon to unprotect the worksheet

To unlock certain cells:
- Select the cells, columns, or rows that you want to allow to be edited by others
- On the Home tab, in the Cells group, select Format
- Note that the Lock Cell icon is highlighted in orange by default, indicating that the cell will be locked when the worksheet protection is activated.

Or, you can also check the locked status:
- Select Format Cells
- Select the heading tab Protection
- If there is a NO tick in the Locked box, it means the cell is not locked
- Select OK